Monthly Archives: February 2012

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When I read some of the comments to this indie-game my breath caught, ↵because I feared I would have to launch a copyright lawsuit ;-) Anyway, since ↵Minecraft, ↑Antichamber is the indie-game I am looking most forward to. There’s a teaser trailer at the official website and 8.5 minutes of commented gameplay footage ↑at Kotaku. Head over and drool! via ↑entry at ↑boingboing … Continue reading →

The above 3D-scene, called ‘Desert Lion,’ was done by Andrew March in 2004 and since then sat on my HDD. Andrew used the model of the Cougar ↑mech (which at least dates back to 2002, but you can still ↓download it) by Pawel Czarnecki—until today a legend within the scene—, the model of the ↑AMX-30 tank by Deespona, and nicely composed and rendered them within his own scene. Obviously the piece of art was created under the impression of the ↑Iraq War. The picture immediately rung a chord within me back then, but somehow I never came around … Continue reading →

zeph’s pop culture quiz #17 The screencap got a bit dark, so I’ll explain: A man is pulling at an iron ring to open a trapdoor. What does he expect to be down there, what was below the trapdoor? As I deem this to be a hard one, here’s another hint: The Lady in the picture—what is she? Ultimately her fate has something to do with what was below the trapdoor. You can answer either of the two questions. But I guess if you can answer one, you’ll know the solution to the other one, too. … Continue reading →

But—and it was a very large but—his had been the guiding brain, the one with the big overall concept, the vision. And that was the one that counted. (Jones 1966: chpt. 1) Briefly he considered his future, but the idea of life without the Project lacked reality. (Jones 1966: chpt. 1) They were both roughly the same age, in their very early fifties, though a hundred years earlier they would have appeared much younger. (Jones 1966: chpt. 1) Now it’s all over, and in the last few weeks, I’ve begun to realize what it … Continue reading →

↑Think tank is a slang term used to describe a robotic weapons platform that makes use of artificial intelligence to enhance its abilities. Most of the think tanks portrayed in ↑Ghost in the Shell (manga, films, and series), along with other machinery, (e.g. attack helicopters such as the Jigabachi AV) are developed and manufactured by a fictional company named Kenbishi Industries. The above is ↑Cole Blaq‘s rendition of such a machine. In the foreground is a custom ↵lego friends minidoll by ↑Mike the Maker depicting the cyborg Major ↑Motoko Kusanagi. Here are two more lego renditions: ↑by gambort, and ↑by … Continue reading →

Finally Africa! In 2005 I learned that cyberpunk literature offers a platform for the issues of Latin America (Toledano Redondo 2005), and five years later the existence of a ↵literary steampunk scene in Brazil (Lori-Ribeiro & Silva 2010) came to my knowledge. What’s apt for the Latin American World seems to be apt for Africa, too. Jonathan Dotse, an IT student and science-fiction writer living in Accra, Ghana, runs the blog ↑AfroCyberPunk, ↑which is here to explore the possibilities of African science fiction and to expose it’s immense creative potential to the world. For too long, science fiction has failed … Continue reading →

Radiolab carries a wonderful ↑podcast on mutant rights: Reporter Ike Sriskandarajah tells Jad and Robert a story about two international trade lawyers, Sherry Singer and Indie Singh, who noticed something interesting while looking at a book of tariff classifications. “Dolls,” which represent human beings, are taxed at almost twice the rate of “toys,” which represent something not human—such as robots, monsters, or demons. As soon as they read that, Sherry and Indie saw dollar signs. It just so happened that one of their clients, Marvel Comics, was importing its action figures as dolls. And one set of action figures really … Continue reading →

He promised it ↵in a comment here, and made it true: The podcast ↑JetHead live with astronaut Mike Mullane is online. ↑Mike Mullane is a former NASA astronaut and author of the book ↑Riding rockets: The outrageous tales of a space shuttle astronaut (2006). The tagline of JetHead’s interview with Mullane reads: ‘What’s it like to ride over 4 million pounds of explosive thrust into earth orbit? Three times?’ This gives an overall impression, but there’s more in the book and the podcast, e.g. Mullane’s evolution from a ‘male sexist pig’ [his own words] towards a human being ;-) Much … Continue reading →

zeph’s pop culture quiz #16 In which city is the street in the picture? All right, I confess, the screencap is not from a recent movie, but it has a direct connection to a very recent one. And for those faithful readers—if any of them are left, that is—of ↑ye ole xirdalium: I’ve been there once … long, long time ago. Just leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a comment’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If … Continue reading →